Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

Environment Protection: Wales

Baroness Randerson: To ask His Majesty's Government what discussions they have had with the Government of Wales on the need to establish a permanent environmental governance body to enable compliance with legal obligations under the Trade and Cooperation Agreement and the Aarhus Convention.

Lord Benyon: My Department is in regular contact with the Welsh Government (alongside other Devolved Governments) regarding environmental governance. The Welsh Government has set out its intention to establish a Commission for the environment and has appointed an interim complaints assessor. The UK/EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement (which reflects within it certain obligations under the Aarhus Convention to which the UK is also a signatory) places obligations on the parties to ensure that their competent authorities (which enforce relevant law with regard to environment and climate) give due consideration to alleged breaches of law, and that there are sufficient remedies available, dissuasive sanctions and judicial proceedings accessible to natural and legal persons. The UK has a well-established environment regulatory and enforcement regime. Regulators such as the Environment Agency, Natural England, the Health and Safety Executive, local authorities and their equivalents across the Devolved Administrations have the powers to regulate or take enforcement action against third parties such as business.

Department of Health and Social Care

Cancer: Radiotherapy

Baroness Merron: To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to reduce waiting times for patients who have been diagnosed with cancer and are waiting for radiotherapy treatment.

Lord Markham: Eleven Radiotherapy Networks were established across England in 2019/20 to drive improvements through greater workforce resilience and increased access to specialist skills and knowledge, ensuring all patients can access the very best treatment regardless of where they live.Since 2016, around £162 million of central investment has been made to replace or upgrade around 100 radiotherapy machines so that every radiotherapy service has access to modern equipment capable of delivering innovative treatment techniques. This investment was in addition to the investment that National Health Service trusts make to maintain their infrastructure. NHS England is currently undertaking a stocktake of LINAC age, which will be completed in summer 2023 and is working with partners to undertake a demand and capacity review which will complete in 2023/24.NHS England are working with professional bodies to explore opportunities for developing apprenticeship schemes for radiotherapy physicists, dosimetrists, and radiographers.

Department for Work and Pensions

Department for Work and Pensions: Artificial Intelligence

Lord Clement-Jones: To ask His Majesty's Government how manyautomated decision-making systems are currently used by the Department of Work and Pensions (partially or wholly) to make decisions that affect people’s legal rights or entitlements; and how many of those have publicly available (1) equality impact assessments, and (2) data protection impact assessments.

Viscount Younger of Leckie: I refer the noble Lord to the answer given to PQ 187258 in relation to automated decision making systems in use by DWP. The department has robust processes to ensure ethical use and impact of data is considered, which includes Equality Impact Assessments and Data Protection Impact Assessments for large-scale transformative initiatives that involve personal data, aligned with data-ethics frameworks, codes of practice, and working principles for analytical communities within the department that work with personal data. However, we currently have no plans to publish further details of these services. The DWP’s Personal Information Charter (PIC) ensures that its customers are aware of the DWP’s use of automated decision making.